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Welcome to Insights in Nursing Episode 30

Nurse Medication Errors

Host Jamie Davis was joined on this week’s show by Kim McAllister of the Emergiblog and Terri Schmitt from NurseStory.com.

In the first article, the panelists share their take on an article about a nurse who accidentally infused 50 milliliters of Potassium Chloride in 30 minutes instead of over 5 hours, overdosing the patient by ten times the appropriate dose leading to the patient’s death. Kim went ahead by saying that nurses are only humans and that errors are unavoidable. However, what we can do is to be extra careful. Terri added that being diligent in checking prescriptions and being prepared to question physicians if in doubt with a prescription. The podmedic adds by saying that there should be an error reporting system which supports education and correction instead of outright punishment.

Increasing Deaths from “Alarm Fatigue”

This next article talks about how the huge number of alarms going off for so many reasons cause nurses to become desensitized to it. The panelists each share their experiences of alarm fatigue and why it causes desensitization or hyper-sensitization from hearing alarms from monitors. At the end of the article, it points out that just for putting off one alarm, more than a minute of a nurse’s time is taken away from patient care. Terri’s take on it was no monitoring system or alarm can replace good nursing assessment and that there should be a better monitoring system or technology available that wouldn’t cause alarm fatigue to health workers.

Summit for Future of Nursing

Nurses, nursing students, educators and leaders in nursing participated in a nursing summit which included panel discussions, a question-and-answer format and breakout sessions for work groups to discuss each of the landmark report’s eight recommendations. Terri talked about how health care professionals should start working together for the improvement of providing better care and set aside professional differences and egos. Kim’s take on it was to give nurses a bigger role in committees and give them an equal voice.

Hospital Food: Good or Bad?

Our panelists share their views on this article where a journalist confined at a hospital said that he had no complaints on the quality of care he had received during his stay except for the food they served.

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Join us!

On the panel this week:

Terri Schmitt from NurseStory.com and on Twitter @onlinenursing.

Kim McAllister of Emergiblog.com and on Twitter @emergiblog.

and host Jamie Davis, the Podmedic, RN, NREMTP, BA, AAS managing director of the ProMed Network and host of the Nursing Show and MedicCast weekly programs.

Join us as we delve in to our week’s topic.

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Links from the show:

Patient Dies from Nurse Medication Error

Lacking Nurse Response from “Alarm Fatigue”

Nursing Summit Addresses Future of Nursing

Great Hospital Care, Bad Food

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Kim McAllister is giving away a book titled Chocolate and Vicodin by Jennette Fulda which is basically a person’s struggle with a headache that never goes away and gives the reader an idea of how it’s like for a person with chronic pain gets through the day. Stay tuned for details on how to get this great book.

Contact Insights in Nursing

Do you have a question or a comment for our nurse panelists for this or any other episode of Insights in Nursing? Email us at InsightsInNursing@GMail.comwith your comments on this episode, suggestions for the show or future episodes or just to tell about what you think is important right now for you as a nurse!

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